see that clever play on words!

Archive for the ‘announcements’ Category

I’ve just written a quick email to the Versions toolkit team to say what a great document they’ve produced – possibly the best, most practical thing I’ve read all year. It’s just so common-sensical. It lays out some useful milestone versions, and provides guidance on identifying versions, including an author checklist of information to include in a document that might be placed on open access.

This is something to keep at the forefront of our submission interface design and I’ll be adding it to our repository information pages..

I’ve been doing a number of training sessions lately, for a number of different, err, stakeholders in the repository. Today I have my first session with the five librarians that will be helping to administer the collections, and perform the mediation on deposits.

I’ve split the sessions up, ostensibly into three meetings over three weeks. The first will cover the basics – open access, institutional repositories, copyright and permissions (plus licences and terms and conditions – exciting!) and versions. We’ll also go over the main features of our DSpace installation, from an end-user perspective. I’ll ask them to log in, then before our next session I’ll add them as administrators to their particular area of responsibility.

I’m aiming to give them all a chance to reflect on what they’ve covered between one session and the next. It really is a lot to take in, and I remember back to the three days I spent at the RSP Summer School in June 2007 and the breadth of information we took in – quite a lot to get your head around.

It will really help to have extra hands to check submissions – not because I’m flat out but because it provides a continuity of service (so I can go on hols over Easter!). Also I’m rolling out the promotion for the repository over the next few weeks, in a fairly understated kind of way. This week it’s e-theses, to coincide with the university ‘Innovations Week’, where e-theses get a stand in the Claverton Rooms cafeteria. The week after it’s ‘Meet the new Research Publications Librarian’ (me!) announced on the internal news pages. Finally, around, or maybe just after Easter it’s a ‘Know your Author rights’ campaign. *That* should be interesting…

Well, better sign off here. Almost time for the training session number one.

The Internet Librarian International Conference in London, October 8-9 has a repository masterclass. Run by Frank Cervone of Northwestern University, USA it’s called ‘Repositories and Digital Initiatives’. The class is on the Sunday 7th October, before the conference. It looks very practical and the blurb says ‘through this step-by-step road map and by looking at examples of repositories that have been implemented in many different countries, you’ll leave the session ready to plan your own’. I like the idea of looking at existing examples, that’s my learning style..
Another quick plug – on the Sunday afternoon is the session ‘Using blogs effectively within your organisation’, run by Brian Kelly and myself.. Quick, sign up!.. :)

Marhaba. Welcome to my blog chronicling my thoughts, storing my links, generally journaling my work working on a university repository.
Please go ahead and click on the About link at the top of the page to get a flavour of who I am and the purpose of this blog.
The first few posts on this blog will be thick and fast, with reports on events from the last few months. I hope to post at least two or three times per week.